


every heart to love will come

by Wonko



Category: Holby City
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Continuation, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 07:54:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17039804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonko/pseuds/Wonko
Summary: The story of the journey Serena Campbell takes to come back home again.





	every heart to love will come

_Ring the bells that still can ring_  
_Forget your perfect offering_  
_There is a crack, a crack in everything_  
_That's how the light gets in_  
**_\- Leonard Cohen_**

For a long time after her last glimpse of Bernie quietly leaving Albie’s, Serena expects to see her everywhere. She catches her smile on strangers’ lips, her perfume on the air, the exact shade of her hair in the play of morning light as winter shades slowly into spring. The pain of Bernie’s absence from her life is a wound she can’t help but keep fresh. She welcomes every stab of agony, takes it as her due. She knows that when the pain stops, she’ll have nothing left.

Leah moves on to pastures new almost immediately. Serena is gracious, provides a good reference, almost manages not to hate her a little bit. It’s not her fault, for all she’d been pushy and unrelenting in her pursuit of what she wanted. And then in the new year Greta is hurt and suddenly her life is all physical therapy appointments and Jason’s schedule and a crying baby in the night, and she tries not to think about how much she wishes Bernie were here to take some of the unrelenting weight off her shoulders. But this is exactly the life Serena let her go to save her from, and she tries to take comfort in knowing that Bernie is doing what she needs to do, saving lives, being the best of the best. Without her.

~~~

“It’s about time you got back out there,” Fleur says over a coffee one day in May. It’s a nice day, the first really warm day of the year, and they’re sitting in the peace garden watching people go by.

“I don’t think so,” Serena says reflexively, and Fleur rolls her eyes.

“Doesn’t have to be about finding the love of your life,” she says, and Serena thinks that’s a good job, because she’s pretty sure she already found that. Fleur nudges her. “You can just sow your wild oats a bit you know.”

Serena considers that for a few days, acknowledges that she’s lonely, that she misses waking up beside someone. Misses kissing and caressing. Misses sex, if she’s truly honest with herself. So she dips her toe in the waters, lets Fleur take her out on the town, sets up a profile on a couple of dating apps.

She goes on four dates with Annabelle, a registrar from another hospital who’s twenty years her junior. That ends when she turns up on AAU one day to surprise her, just as Cameron Dunn arrives from Darwin for a consult. Whatever might have been or could have been with Annabelle is drowned under a hot wave of shame.

Next she manages a month of dates with Simon, a man her own age who she met at the LGBT+ book club Fleur convinced her to go to. He’s recently divorced, recently discovered he’s not straight. Serena takes him under her wing at first, even though she has little more idea of what it really means to accept your bisexuality than he does. Being with him is comfortable, unchallenging. Dull. He must think the same about her, because when he meets a man at the gym who makes his heart beat faster, he’s gone. And Serena is happy enough to see him go, wishes him well, but feels no pang of regret.

She has a series of one night stands with a succession of inappropriate people. It’s exhausting, and she quickly tires of the effort it all takes, to be charming and witty and to have her legs waxed regularly and a pair of tweezers on hand for stray chin hairs at all times.

She’s nearly given up on the whole idea as a bad job when Guinevere starts at nursery in September. They’ve been lucky enough to get her into one that’s attached to an outstanding rated local school, which should be enough to get her name on the roll when the time comes. Serena has just dropped her off one morning, in a rush as usual, when she bumps into someone at the school gate - quite literally. She sends a briefcase and pile of papers flying and is crouching down to gather them up with a thousand apologies on her lips before she realises that the other person is laughing. She looks up with a rueful smile and sees a pair of shining green eyes and long wavy auburn hair cascading round a sweetly pretty face. The woman is maybe five years younger than her, and so beautiful in the late summer sun that Serena feels her heart skip.

Her name is Jennifer - Jen - and she’s the deputy head. Somehow Serena runs into her at the school gates more and more, and the third time it happens she dredges up some of the old confidence and asks her if she’d like to get a drink sometime.

She would.

A drink becomes dinner. One dinner becomes two. They kiss on Serena’s doorstep after their third date. It’s sweet, soft, barely awkward at all. Jen is so careful with her, so accommodating of her schedule and her commitments. What teacher doesn’t know about long hours? Before she knows it, Serena finds she’s been in a relationship for six months. She tells herself that she’s over Bernie. That she’s moving on.

Jason likes Jen. She’s taught dozens of autistic children over the years, knows how to handle his need for routine and structure, knows how to talk to him. He keeps himself a little apart from her though, doesn’t try to call her Auntie Jen or anything like that. A part of Serena is sad about that but another much larger part is relieved.

~~~

On the anniversary of their first meeting, Jen takes her to a fancy restaurant. The evening starts off well, with hands held over the table, with expensive wine and delicious food. Serena has bought her a silver charm bracelet and a charm of a briefcase, a nod to how they met.

Jen gives Serena a house key.

Her heart stops, then plummets to the floor. “What’s this?” she asks, her voice low and strange to her own ears.

Jen frowns, the lines around her eyes deepening just slightly. “I’m asking you to move in with me, Serena,” she says.

Serena feels like she’s suddenly stepped in a patch of quicksand. “Oh,” she manages after a long moment, and she can tell from the look on Jen’s face that her reaction - or lack of reaction - has not gone down well.

Things snowball from there.

They go back to Jen’s house in a silent cab because neither of them have much tolerance for public showdowns. But the gloves are off when they get inside and suddenly Serena finds herself facing a barrage of stored up invective.

“You wouldn’t even leave a toothbrush here for the first three months.”

“You never talk about the future.”

“You won’t even _try_ to book annual leave during the school holidays so we can go away together.”

And finally, after Jen has unburdened herself of everything else, the piece de resistance.

“No wonder you won’t move in with me. No-one’s ever going to live up to _her,_ are they?”

And Serena thinks about that on the cab ride home and in the long, sleepless night that follows. She lets herself think about Bernie consciously for the first time in more than a year. Acknowledges to herself at last that a part of her has never stopped.

She collects together the few possessions she’d allowed Jen to leave at her place and drives over the next morning. “You’re right,” she says on the doorstep as she hands them over. “And it’s not fair on you. I’m sorry.” And she walks away.

~~~

“So why do you think you pushed Bernie away?”

She’s been expecting the question, had thought she was prepared for it. She’s been seeing George for two months now, a one hour session every week. She’d thought she’d had her fill of therapists after Elinor, but - after the debacle with Jen - it had become clear that there were some things she still had to unpack.

“I didn’t push her away,” she replies instinctively. “I loved her enough to set her free.”

George writes something down in his notes. “Do you think she wouldn’t have been free if she’d stayed with you?”

The question is uncomfortable, like a tick burrowing under her skin. She tries to deflect, even knowing it won’t do any good. “Well, we did enjoy handcuffs on the odd occasion.”

George’s lips twitch. He knows her tricks by now. “So you’d have trapped her? Kept her against her will?”

Serena winces, shakes her head helplessly. She isn’t sure how to explain. “I didn’t want to be what held her back from the life she wanted,” she tries at last. “I didn’t want to be something she’d grow to resent.”

She knows how his next questions will go. Why did she think that would happen? Why didn’t she believe that Bernie had really wanted the life they could have had together? Had they ever actually sat down and had a proper conversation about what they both wanted?

He sets her homework to write a letter to Bernie. She doesn’t have to send it but she has to be honest and truthful about what was going through her mind the night they parted, about what’s happened in her life since, about how she feels now. Serena finds it almost unbearably hard but she forces herself to do it. And somehow it does actually help and she realises that she and Bernie, for all they’d loved each other so firecely and truly, had never actually learned how to talk to each other.

Perhaps it’s that thought that makes her copy everything she’s written into an email and send it to Bernie, or perhaps it’s the fourth glass of Shiraz drunk on her own on the night of Jason and Greta’s second wedding anniversary. She doesn’t expect a reply - God knows Bernie was always atrocious about keeping in touch, even when they were together - but to her surprise she gets one the very next day

_My dear Serena,_

_I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to hear from you. I think of you often and have so hoped that you were happy and contented. I must confess I’ve roped in the odd spy over the years to give me news of you (Darwin isn’t so far away from AAU really.) I suppose I didn’t want to make things more difficult for you - for both of us, really - by popping up every now and again. In some ways, the worst thing about all of this was losing my best friend. Do you feel like that too?_

_I’d like to tell you all about what’s been happening since we last saw each other. My life has been very busy as I’m sure you can imagine. I’ve often wanted to just drop you a line or call you up but I worried that you wouldn’t want to hear from me, or that I’d be an unwelcome reminder of the past. Can I take it, from your email, that that’s not actually the case?_

_You said you miss me. I miss you too, Serena. I’d like to be able to talk to you again._

_Love always,_  
_Bernie x_

Serena reads the message at least ten times before she can make herself reply.

 _Yes,_ she writes. _I’d like that too._

~~~

They write every week at first. Bernie talks about her work in Nairobi, about a paper she’s writing, about the junior doctors she’s mentored. Serena talks about Guin and Jason and Greta, about the new rotation of starry eyed F1s, about Fleur’s latest girlfriend who’s got her all in a tizzy. Somehow they become part of each other’s lives again. They talk more now than when they were together, it seems, and somehow the fact that they _are_ just friends makes the whole thing less pressured.

Serena has missed her best friend too.

It takes months for them to circle round to anything really personal. They’re up to three emails a week before it happens and surprisingly it’s Bernie who initiates it.

 _Are you seeing anyone at the moment?_ she asks. _Any double dates with Fleur and her new beau on the horizon?_

So Serena tells her about Annabelle and how that ended and about Simon and how that ended. She skips the disastrous one night stands to spare her blushes and moves straight on to Jen. And how that ended.

 _She said I wasn’t committing because no-one would ever hold a candle to you,_ she writes. _And she was right. I know I’m not what you need. I know you would never have been happy with the life I could have given you. But that doesn’t change the fact that I will always, always, love you more than anyone. I can never truly give anyone my heart because I sent a piece of it away, with you._

She waits for a reply.

And waits.

And waits.

She doesn’t hear from Bernie for a week and a half. She’s talked herself around to being angry with her when a reply finally does come, and almost deletes it from her inbox before opening it. But she thinks better of it and finally clicks on it, not sure what she’s expecting to find - something long and meandering or short and to the point. It’s somehow both and neither at the same time.

_Serena,_

_I’m sorry for the radio silence. Falling back on bad habits - I’ll do better. The truth is, what you said in your last email took a bit of time to process._

_I left you because I wanted you to be happy and I didn’t think I could be the one to make that happen. I thought some short term pain for us both would be worth it if you could find someone who you thought fitted in the life you wanted. It seemed obvious to me that you didn’t think that was me. I don’t think I’ve ever really understood why you thought that, but maybe I’m beginning to?_

_I think we can both agree that you and I have never been very good at actually saying what we mean. You’ve told me what you were thinking that night, but I’ve never done you the same courtesy. I’d like to fix that now._

_I have never been very good at domestic life. I tried for twenty five years to be the wife and mother that Marcus wanted me to be, but I always chafed against it. I thought for a long time that I was trying to escape from domesticity, that I needed excitement and adrenaline in my life. And then I met you and we had our ward and our little trauma unit. Not much compared to the army, or to the Kenyan National Trauma Centre, right? But those few months were the happiest I’ve ever been. It wasn’t domestic life I was no good at. It was being a man’s wife._

_I don’t need adventures abroad. I’ve done all that. And I think maybe you think Nairobi is some sort of exotic wonderland where I’m challenged and fulfilled like nowhere else. Yes, it’s a fantastic job, but I go home every night to an empty flat and I miss you so much. I can’t believe how much it still hurts._

_I can do work I find fulfilling anywhere. I can only find you in one place._

_I’m going to be in town next month for Cameron’s birthday. Can I please see you?_

_Love always,_  
_Bernie x_

Serena replies before she’s fully processed what she’s doing.

_Yes._

~~~

They agree to meet in the park. It’s Serena’s day off and Guinevere has been under the weather and can’t go to daycare. It doesn’t escape Serena's keen sense of irony that she’s going to see Bernie Wolfe again in a suburban playground.

She looks older, but no less beautiful. There are a few extra lines around her mouth, no doubt down to the cigarettes that Serena can immediately smell on her. Her hair is greying now at the temples, though it’s hard to see because the African sun has bleached her always golden locks somehow even lighter.

Guin doesn’t remember Bernie but she’s a happy and friendly child who takes to her instantly. They watch her running around the playground for a while, making excruciatingly polite small talk until finally Bernie turns to Serena with a sad smile.

“Do you ever think of how wonderful life could be, if only you were brave enough?”

Serena laughs. “Yes,” she admits. “That’s it, isn’t it? I was scared of not being enough. That’s why I pushed you away.”

Bernie’s eyes are soft and kind. “And I was scared of the same thing,” she says. “That’s why I let you.”

They lapse into silence again, their bodies angling towards each other but not touching. “Do you still love me?” Serena whispers at last, her eyes fixed on her own hands.

“Yes,” Bernie murmurs back. “I’ve never stopped. Not for a single day.”

Serena’s heart is in her mouth and for a moment it stops her speaking. “I lied to you that night you know,” she manages finally. “When I said I couldn’t imagine our life together.” She looks up into Bernie’s face, her bottom lip trembling. “I imagine it all the time.”

Slowly, Bernie reaches for Serena. Their hands meet for the first time in more than two and a half years. Serena feels it like an electric shock, like a physical rush of muscle memory. “So do I,” Bernie says, and Serena can’t hold back her tears any longer. She collapses forward into Bernie’s waiting arms and sobs into her neck for all the lonely nights and empty days and the years of missing Bernie like a piece of her soul. It takes her a while to realise that Bernie’s crying too, that she’s running her hands through Serena’s hair and kissing her forehead and whispering that she loves her and begging not to be sent away again. She feels all her love for Bernie pressing against the cracks of her broken heart and suddenly it’s spilling out so pure and bright that she isn’t sure how she could have ever have thought this wasn’t where they’d end up, in the end.

“Auntie Serena?” Guin pipes up, toddling up to them with a concerned look on her sweet little baby face. “Why are you crying? What’s wrong?”

Serena pulls her great-niece into the embrace and laughs through her tears. “Nothing’s wrong, darling,” she says. She presses her lips against Bernie’s, tasting cigarettes and salt. “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s all right now.”

And it is.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been rather cathartic for me - I hope it's been the same for you. Catch me writing and crying in an empty house while my wife's at work!


End file.
